Edmonton Journal

TV Thursday : Flashpoint

By Alex Strachan, Postmedia News September 20, 2012  

     Flashpoint Photograph by: Jessica Johnston , CTV

"The job does get tough," Hugh Dillon's grizzled veteran Ed Lane tells freshfaced students in the early moments of Flashpoint's season opener. He's at his son's school for career day, and he's laying down the law as a career police officer with Toronto's Strategic Response Unit sees it.

"But if you work hard, do your best and do what you think is right, then you'll find peace in whatever it is you choose to do."

That line, penned by Flashpoint writer-producers Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern, could just as easily sum up one of Canadian TV's better-known success stories as it unveils its fifth and final season. Flashpoint, which returns tonight on a new day and time, will air 13 episodes before calling it a day. In all, 75 episodes will have been made - short of the 100 normally required for a syndication, but it's a success story just the same.

Canadian TV dramas often struggle for respect on the international stage, but Flashpoint earned that respect - stellar ratings at home, a shelf of Gemini Awards and, thanks to the 2008 writers' strike in Hollywood, several summer runs on U.S. TV on CBS.

The U.S. arrangement proved to be a mixed blessing. CBS programmed Flashpoint as summer filler in its later seasons, and CTV, not wanting to lose the ad revenue from simultaneous broadcasts, was compelled to show Flashpoint during the summer months, when viewing is lighter than in winter. CBS dropped out at the end of last season, so Flashpoint's farewell season will air now, during the fall and winter, where it will likely get a decent sendoff.

Cop shows are a dime a dozen these days, but Flashpoint managed to carve its own niche. The evidence is there from the beginning in tonight's season opener: The emphasis is on character over violence. Flashpoint tries to get at the why behind its emotionally disturbed characters' actions, and although it's a cop show about a rapid-response tactical team, there's more talk - and hostage negotiating - than gunfire.

Successful TV shows are about characters we want to see week after week, and over the years Flashpoint has reaped the benefit of decent acting. There's a temptation in TV action thrillers to emphasize action over character, but over the years Dillon, Enrico Colantoni and Amy Jo Johnson managed to give their characters depth and heft.

Colantoni's Sgt. Greg Parker makes an unlikely TV hero-cop: the streetsmart, low-key negotiator who gets things done by talking first and aiming second. When Parker tells an upset, gun-wielding hostagetaker midway through tonight's episode, "Like I said, I'm a professional negotiator; what I'd like to do here is help facilitate a dialogue," Colantoni gives the words a kind of controlled emotion that belies what, in a lesser actor's hands, might seem like clunky TV-cop jargon.

Flashpoint is well written, too. A lesser show would leave the words right there - cue the snipers - but in Flashpoint, the hostage taker snaps back: "That's what I'm trying to do here. I don't need a professional negotiator to have a conversation with my own ex-wife."

Instead of ending the conversation in a hail of TV bullets, Colantoni's negotiator replies, "That's great, let's do that; you're in charge here. Why don't you just tell the other people in the room that it's time for them to go?"

No matter how Flashpoint's final season plays out, the show has left a lasting legacy. Homegrown dramas like Saving Hope and Rookie Blue were given a fair hearing on U.S. TV in part because of the trail blazed by Flashpoint. Not many homegrown dramas can say that. (10 p.m., CTV)

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